


Gorgon Hunt

by Winterling42



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 14:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8374810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Premise: it takes Liliana, Chandra, and Nissa more than like 1 day to figure out what's up on Kaladesh. In the meantime, Gideon goes on a hunt, Jace regrets several major life choices, and Ral is displeased with them both.





	1. Chapter 1

In the third week of the hunt for Vraska, Gideon came back early. Jace was still finishing lunch when the door from the portal door creaked open. Jace looked up to frown at it (his hinges didn’t squeak) but it was just Gideon, leaning most of his weight on the door handle, covered in muck from the waist down. It was Gideon, which meant that he wasn’t physically hurt, but it was also Gideon, which meant he might not have sat down to sleep since he’d left five days ago with a cohort of Azorius law-mages.

“Gideon?” Jace asked, as the other planeswalker sighed and gave up the door as a leaning post to stumble inside.

“We’re getting close.” Gideon collapsed into a chair. (Jace winced, both at the chair’s creak and at the mud his friend had tracked inside. At least Jace hoped _most_ of it was mud.) “I thought we had her cornered today. This morning? But the lair was empty when we got there. Not empty –“ he corrected himself, pulling at the straps of his armor. “She’d petrified her followers before we arrived.”

Jace shoved around the last few bits of lettuce on his plate, reluctant to say anything about a hunt he wasn’t involved in. “There was another murder.” So much for not saying anything. Gideon’s head jerked up from his inspection of a scratched plate.

“Impossible. She was on the run for three days, she didn’t have time to –“

“Last night. The report came in about fifteen hours ago.”

“One of the Azorius?”

It hadn’t been, but Jace wanted to mention that even less. He’d already gone through one round of Ravnican friends being murdered to get to him. He didn’t need another.

Apparently no one had told Vraska that.

“One of the Guildless.” The owner and part-time manager of the coffee shop Jace went to, just outside the boundaries between New Prahv and the Second. A bright woman, and brave to set up shop so close to guild territory. This was the third shop she’d opened, all wildly successful according to her friendly chatter.

Her statue had been found screaming.

Gideon sighed, drawing Jace out of his morbid thoughts. “We just don’t have a way of predicting where she’ll show up after planeswalking. Bad enough that we’re tracking her through her own territory, but no matter what we try she always just ‘walks out of it. And then back to her scheduled assassinations, apparently.” He pulled away the plates of armor protecting his torso and back, letting them fall to the floor with a loud _clang_. “I’m sorry Jace. I know you need this done…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Jace said at once. Something was poking at the back of his mind, a thought or an idea that he couldn’t look at just yet. “This isn’t as straightforward as the Eldrazi. I know you’re doing everything you can.”

It didn’t have anything to do with the Eldrazi; that thought led him further away from the nebulous thing coalescing in his brain.

“Still. I think it might be best if I don’t bring so many arresters with me next time.” Gideon extracted his foot from a boot with an unpleasant squelch and grimaced. “No offense to the Azorius, but suspects often are _less_ likely to answer questions after being put in a detention sphere. Not more.”

“You can’t go alone, and you already said you didn’t want to involve your contacts at the Boros.” The thought definitely had something to do with guilds, though it wasn’t the Legion he was thinking of. His mind led him sideways, through a pale drizzle of rain and Boros drills…

“Going alone might–“ Gideon’s thought was cut short by Jace swearing softly and putting his head in both hands. “Jace?”

“I know how we can track Vraska,” he muttered through his palms. “But he’s not going to like it.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the first side-street Jace turned down, Ral caught him, grabbing the Guildpact by a shoulder and wrenching him around to face Ral. Since they were close enough to a wall, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to press Jace up against it, and keep a tight hold of his utterly unremarkable shirt. Just to prevent the mind mage from slipping away and running them around in circles for a few more eternities.

“You _idiot_ ,” Ral started in at once, ignoring the way Jace’s hands had come up to wrap around his wrists. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I needed to get a hold of a planeswalker with Ravnica’s interests in mind. Did I come to the wrong place?” Jace pointedly tugged Ral’s hands away, and Ral let him go, his mind still racing.

“And your best idea on how to contact me was to send a sprite with a mana trail into the heart of Nivix and, what? Hope she didn’t get caught?”

Jace shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

The noise Ral made was somewhere between a strangled gasp and a groan.

“Ral are you … worried about me?”

“Of course not,” Ral snorted, but he took a step back and flicked imaginary specks of dirt off of his gauntlet. “As far as I’m concerned, the position for Living Guildpact is still open, as soon as someone can figure out how to pry it out of that swollen head of yours.”

“Of course,” Jace said, but there was a smugness to it that Ral found unconvincing.

“What did you want to see me about? Since you went to all this trouble.”

“Right.” The Guildpact ran a hand through his horrible hair (no improvement) and laid out his words like he was setting up for a game of chess. “As I’m sure you know, there have been some fatalities among the Azorius, attributed to the gorgon Vraska. She’s another Ravnican planeswalker who’s… not pleased with me becoming the Living Guildpact.”

“Sounds like we’d get along,” Ral said drily, and then snapped his fingers. “Wasn’t there a case about a couple years back where you personally went after a Golgari gorgon?”

“She isn’t part of the guild, as far as I can tell. Gideon already tried–“

“Gideon?” Ral asked, like he hadn’t already figured out who the last member of the ‘Gatewatch’ had to be. The irritatingly regular planeswalks in and out of Boros territory, the whole ‘collapsing on the steps of the Guildpact Chamber’ business. Gideon Jura sounded someone who might have _fun_ at what the Azorius considered a party.

“Gideon Jura. He’s one of the Gatewatch,” predictable, “And I asked him to look for Vraska while I take care of paperwork.” Jace sighed so heavily on the last word of his sentence that he bent over a little.

“So when you said you wanted a planeswalker with Ravnica’s interests at heart, what you meant was…?” Ral had a pretty good idea what Jace was going to ask, and he was already displeased with it.

“Help Gideon track Vraska using project Lightning Bug,” Jace said at once, which pretty much confirmed all of Ral’s worst guesses. “I understand that you and I don’t always see eye to eye, Ral, but Vraska’s scheming has the potential to upset the balance of power I’m trying to maintain. Two years ago she laid out her plan to assassinate every guild leader on Ravnica.”

“Huh.” Ral couldn’t muster much of an interested response. It was one thing to get pulled out of his lab by a suspiciously familiar mana signature on an unauthorized sprite, quite another to be asked to babysit a planeswalker who was basically a Boros legionnaire on a jaunt through the Undercity. “Why aren’t you getting involved again? I thought you’d love a chance to get out of that office.”

“I’m trying to do what you _asked_ me to,” Jace said, pinching the bridge of his nose in a way that Ral absolutely did not find cute. “I’m _trying_ to be the Guildpact. That means I don’t have _time_ to hunt down Vraska. Gideon does. If you want to help me, help him. And…” he visibly braced himself before saying it, “I’ll owe you.”

“Well, why didn’t you lead with that?” Ral asked, perking up at once. He straightened his harness and tucked his thumbs under the leather straps, grinning. “You’ll owe me a _lot_ for this one, Beleren.”

Jace groaned. “So you’ll do it?”

“Tell your Boros boy to meet me under Szenka’s bridge bright and early tomorrow.”

“How long will it take you to get Lightning Bug up and running?” Jace was obviously torn between wanting to get away and wanting to be involved in the mess he was throwing at Ral. The lightning mage felt his smile getting wider.

“Who said I ever took it down?”

He laughed at Jace’s expression and backed out of the alley, keeping the Guildpact in sight for as long as he could. “Don’t forget, Beleren. You owe me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when will this update? I have zero ideas, especially as we go into NaNoWriMo season and I attempt to work on an original story. But! It exists in the world now. I am pleased with it. Hopefully there will be more one day (hopefully there will be a threesome one day....)

**Author's Note:**

> I am _really_ bad at tagging things, so if you think of something let me know!


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